A movie diary for the October 08 class. When you watch a movie, write about it. See what the rest of the class is up to.
Rules:
1) Posts can only be movie reflections
2) Comments are open for anything, but let's play nice
3) Have fun

Wednesday, February 4, 2009

Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson

So not long ago, I picked up a copy of the book Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, not knowing much besides I just wanted to see the movie because it looked good, and still not having seen it, I figured I would read the book first. After getting into the beginning of it, I started doing some research and came across the documentary, Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, on Instant Play Netflix.

Now you see the runtime of two hours, which is one long documentary, and that may make you a little uneasy, but honestly, it held me in for every minute. It was so good on many different levels that I’ve been craving to watch it again, just because there was so much to see. Hunter S. Thompson was a very interesting person (it would probably be hard to try to make a boring documentary about him), and the people interviewed in the film appeared to me to be well thought out and smart choices. From Johnny Depp narrating the excerpts of his work, to hearing from the people Hunter actually followed around and wrote about, you can see the work put into the film was driven by passion to make the viewer love Hunter as much as the interviewees that knew him did.

Following the life of Hunter S. Thompson was no easy feat to document; he was such a huge persona that eventually he was a bigger story than the Gonzo journalism he invented and wrote. The mixture of unbelievable home videos of him is in itself just enough to watch the documentary, but the entertaining presentation of his whole entire life was what I found to be just good documentary filmmaking. Even going into the film not knowing much about him or his work, it walked me through it to not only care about him and appreciate who he was, but mind you, it had me crying by the end.